Mega Millions vs Powerball

The rules, and when each one took effect

Every value below is read from the game's own rule history, not typed here. Dates are the first DRAWING held under each rule, which is why two of them differ from the sales dates you may see quoted elsewhere.

Per ticket, Mega Millions' combination space is 0.6% smaller — 1 in 290,472,336 against 1 in 292,201,338. Both figures are computed from the pool sizes above and checked at build against the figures the operator and its regulator published.

Per dollar, not per ticket

A Powerball ticket costs $2 and a Mega Millions ticket costs $5, so an equal number of tickets is not an equal spend. The figures below hold the spend equal instead.

Spend $100 on Powerball and your chance of the jackpot is 1 in 5,844,027. Spend the same $100 on Mega Millions and it is 1 in 14,523,617 — so per dollar Powerball gives about 2.49× the chance, entirely because its ticket costs $2 where the other costs $5.

That multiple does not move with the amount spent. At these probabilities the chance of at least one win over n tickets, 1 − (1 − p)ⁿ, is indistinguishable from n × p to eleven significant figures, so n cancels out of the comparison: the multiple is the same at $10 as at $10,000.

Nine tiers each, side by side

Odds are computed from the pool sizes in section 01. Every Mega Millions tier below is checked at build against the operator's own published figure; Powerball publishes no per-tier column we hold, so its jackpot is checked against its regulator's filing and the rest are computed. Prizes are the base amounts, before either game's multiplier — those are section 04. Powerball's structure has applied since 2015-10-07; Mega Millions' since 2025-04-08.

Counted across the 8 non-jackpot tiers, Mega Millions pays more at 6, Powerball at 1, and 1 is equal. The largest tier where the two differ is 4 + the extra ball, at $50,000 in Powerball against $10,000 in Mega Millions. Going the other way, 4 pays $100 against $500. Which of those matters more depends on how often each is won and what you would do with it, and this page does not weigh them.

Adding the tiers up, a Powerball ticket wins something at 1 in 24.87 and a Mega Millions ticket at 1 in 23.07. Both are computed from the pool sizes, like every odds figure here. Powerball publishes 1 in 24.87 and matches. ‼ Mega Millions publishes 1 in 23.08 — a hundredth above what the pools give at this precision, in its April 2025 change announcement rather than on its how-to-play page. We have not established which convention accounts for the difference, so both numbers are stated rather than one being presented as the other. Mega Millions publishes its overall odds in its April 2025 change announcement rather than on its how-to-play page, which is why the two are cited from different places.

Whether a tier pays a fixed amount or a share of a pool is not published nationally by either game, so this page does not say. Nothing here depends on it.

One is optional, one is already in the price

Both games multiply non-jackpot prizes and neither multiplies the jackpot. How you get the multiplier is where they differ.

At the bottom of the ladder that means a matched extra ball alone pays $4 in Powerball, or $40 with Power Play at 10×; in Mega Millions it pays $5, or $50 at 10×, with nothing extra to buy.

‼ Power Play changes what a win pays, never whether you win. A $3 ticket carries exactly the chances of a $2 one — the odds in section 03 are computed from the pool sizes alone, and Powerball's jackpot figure matches its regulator's filing exactly, which could not hold if the add-on moved the underlying chances. So at a fixed spend it buys fewer entries: $30 on Powerball is 15 plain tickets or 10 with Power Play.

At that same $30, the chance of winning something is 1 in 2.18 on plain Powerball tickets, 1 in 2.97 with Power Play, and 1 in 4.28 on Mega Millions. ‼ Unlike the jackpot multiple in section 02, this one MOVES with the amount spent: the gap between the games narrows as the spend rises, because both approach certainty of some prize. Any figure like this one has to name its spend, and this one does.

A median gap of 0.39 of a percentage point

Both games advertise an annuity and offer a smaller cash sum instead. The ratio between the two is set per drawing by each game's operator.

Across 469 paired drawings from 2021-01-15 to 2026-07-31, the median gap between the two games' cash ratios is −0.39 points, and 415 of 469 (88%) sit within a single percentage point of each other. Both series track the 30-year Treasury yield the cash sum is discounted at.

‼ That trend is drawn from a WIDER record than the paired figures above. Across everything held for both games — 2014-08-13 onward, not the 2021-01-01 sample — the median ratio fell from about 78% in 2020 to 44.7% and 45.2% in the most recent year, a fall of about 34 points. The peak year sits outside the paired sample, which is why it is reported as a separate observation rather than as part of it.

Both games' advertised cash figures exist in our record from 2014-08-13. That is the availability date, not the sample: the paired figures above are computed from 2021-01-01 onward, because between those two dates the Powerball record carries 44 drawings against Mega Millions' 666, and one of those years carries none at all. Mega Millions' series runs back to 2010; the Powerball series does not, and nothing we hold explains that earlier gap. A plausible reason is not an established one, so no figure here reaches back past the evidence. The pairing matches each Mega Millions drawing to the nearest Powerball drawing within two days, since the two games draw on different nights. Where two Powerball drawings are equally near, the earlier one is used — its cash figure was already published when the Mega Millions drawing's was set. 2 Powerball rows carry a cash figure outside any plausible range — 2022-02-23 and 2023-03-13 — and are refused rather than corrected here.

The ratio year by year, for each game, is on the jackpot history pages.

No U.S. jurisdiction taxes the two games differently

Federal and state lottery tax rules apply to the amount received. None of them names a game.

On a $1 billion advertised jackpot taken as cash in Florida, the two games land $2.7M apart on a take-home near $301M — and every dollar of that gap comes from the cash ratios in section 05, not from the tax. Federal withholding, the top federal bracket and the state rate apply to the amount received, and none of the three varies by game.

The figure above uses Florida; the state rate applied to it differs by jurisdiction. See it by state — those pages carry the rates, the brackets and the local add-ons, and this page does not repeat them.